Interviews with 15 tattoo and body modification artists. Modern Primitives examines a vivid contemporary enigma: the growing revival of highly visual (and sometimes shocking) "primitive" body modification practices - tattooing, multiple piercing, and scarification. Also added is a new community section, where current practitioners have been invited to have their cards displayed. Modern Primitives was the first book to investigate not only the "how" but also the "why" of body modification practices. It reaches far back into history to multiform cultural traditions to illuminate one of today's most wide-spread youth culture visual signifiers. Heavily illustrated with detailed, contemporary photographs, as well as archival anthropological images and drawings of ancient tattoo traditions, Modern Primitives was ground-zero for today's body-modification trends. 228 pages.
